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ragged hole, and something monstrous rose against us as we
poured inside. We fell upon the faceless thing, devouring
it. We were almost a single entity as we crossed the lower
floors of the building, seeking the rooftop. More outrageous
shapes attempted to block our path, but we were a biblical
flood that couldn’t be stopped or slowed. Every living thing
we washed over became a pile of picked bones. The last
door fell to us, and we surged across the roof.
There, squatting atop a throne of smokestacks, was a
terrible creature—an unapologetic existence of violated
logic and common sense. Snarling, it lifted itself from the
toxic smoke. I answered in equally guttural fashion, the
collective chortle of my monsters embellishing my voice.
I had become no less a violation of nature than the thing
standing before me, and I was pleased for the opportunity to
demonstrate the fact.

***

The excitement from the impending clash woke me from
my displaced dream, and I immediately wondered—if I was
dreaming someone else’s dream, who was dreaming mine?
The answer was obvious. I hoped Miss Patience enjoyed the
exchange as much as I did.
The swapping of dreams was a new development to the
Red Dream—a power that seemed to visit itself upon those
joined in the Shepherd’s Game. The Sage was correct, though
I never truly doubted the general shape of his knowledge.
The players of the game—the Wolves—were indeed caught
up in the same dream. More specifically, our dreams were
now accessible to one another. Even more precisely, it
seemed the specific dreams we shared were determined by
the next names upon our lists. Black Molly was next upon
mine, and so her dreams had come to me, enlightening me

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